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SREENARAYANAGURU OPEN UNIVERSITY

B.A. ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
DISCIPLINE SPECIFIC ELECTIVE COURSE

B21EG04DE
AMERICAN LITERATURE
CREDITS: 6

Course Objectives
1. Provide knowledge of the writers who have steered the course of American literature

2. Provide insight into the techniques and stylistic peculiarities of American literature

3. An understanding of the authors, genres and movements of American literature
4. Equip learners to identify ideas and themes typical of American literature

Course Outcomes
Upon completing the course, the learners,

1. will have a sense of the Americanism that characterises American literature

2. will have a perspective of the contexts of American literature

3. will be able to place American literature within the corpus of world literature, even
while identifying its uniqueness.

4. will identify the themes and narratives particular to American literary expressions
5. will be equipped to explore further about the recent and more popular forms of

American literature.

COURSE DETAILS

BLOCK 1: Background Study

UNIT 1 Native Americans and colonialism – Colonial literature – Puritanism and New
England – Literature of the Revolutionary period – Post-Independence Era
and Nationalism –Transcendentalism – Rise of Literary Realism –Civil War –
Modernism – Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance – Great Depression and
literature – Post-War Literature – Developments in Poetry, Fiction, Drama –
American Multiculturalism and Contemporary Literature.

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